Letters to the Editor: May 18, 2016

$67 million

Heres a conservative estimate of school funding left on the table: $67 million.

The Oklahoma Lottery exists, in part, to provide additional funding for Oklahoma education.

More funding can be provided if one overly restrictive law is modified, as it has been in most other lottery jurisdictions. All profit from the lottery goes to the state. However, our law mandates a minimum 35 percent profit.

This mandate restricts funds for prize payouts.

Lower payouts equal lower sales and lower funding for education.

If you are a lottery player, this should be important to you. If you sell lottery products in your retail location, you should be supportive.

Most importantly, if you support more funding for education, facing budget reductions due to the state budget crisis, then you, too, should be supportive.

Removing the restriction or appropriately reducing it would provide an additional $5 million for fiscal year 17.

The profits grow after that, totaling $67 million or more over the next five years. Yes, it would be a small amount that first year, but wouldnt we rather keep 60-80 teachers employed and teaching our children next year?

We can address all questions about this issue; please ask.

If you support this proposal, our lawmakers need to hear from the voting public.

Rollo Redburn
Oklahoma Lottery , executive director
Oklahoma City

Defining hate

Your article on hate groups (News, The rise of hate?, George Lang, April 13, Oklahoma Gazette) in Oklahoma barely mentioned the Republican party, which  especially with Donald Trump as its presumptive nominee  has become the nations biggest hate group. A friend recently mentioned he tried to attend a Trump rally in Chicago.

I suggested that this is something he should never share with a Mexican-American, given the fact that Trump has directed so much animosity at us.

I get that many Americans believe we have a broken immigration system, but surely there are ways to be constructive about possible solutions that dont involve demonizing Mexican-Americans.

When Mexico sends its people, Trump said the day he announced his candidacy, theyre not sending their best theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

So Trump has never met a good Mexican immigrant. The best he can muster is that some may be good people, but he can only assume it because he doesnt know it as a fact.

Here we have someone whos been in the construction business for decades, has almost certainly employed countless immigrants, but cant say any of them are good.

Wow! If you believe Trump, you pretty much have to assume, like he does, that brown-skinned people who speak Spanish are undesirables, and inevitably, your thoughts will turn to actions.

Trumps Big Lie empowers his followers to make Mexican-American lives difficult in any number of ways, including through violence.

This is why its no exaggeration to say that Trump poses a greater threat to the average Latino than Islamist terrorism does or that his campaign is, in effect, a hate group.

To the extent that the GOP tolerates this kind of discourse, it provides a tent for such groups.

Ari Nuncio
Oklahoma City

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